By Ian King, Business Presenter

The issue of Europe felled each of the last three Conservative Prime Ministers and now blights the administration of a fourth.

Yet could it eventually claim the biggest beast in European politics?

Angela Merkel is riding high. Earlier this week, her CDU/CSU alliance reached a deal with the centre-left SPD to form another grand coalition.

It confirms Mrs Merkel as Chancellor for another four years and, should she see out the full term, she will overtake her former mentor, Helmut Kohl, as the longest-serving Chancellor since Otto von Bismarck.

Cobbling together the coalition, though, has sown the seeds of a row that could ultimately create havoc within the CDU/CSU - a grouping that has dominated post-war German politics every bit as successfully as the Conservatives have in Britain.

Image:Angela Merkel is on the verge of overtaking Helmut Kohl (pictured) as the longest-serving Chancellor since Bismarck

And at the heart of that potential row is Germany's relationship with the rest of the EU.

The draft coalition agreement, published last month, agreed the European Stability Mechanism, the eurozone's main bailout fund, would be converted into a permanent European Monetary Fund overseen by the European Parliament - a eurozone version of the International Monetary Fund.

This is something France, for example, has long wanted.

The idea has also been pushed by Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, as a way of creating a more integrated Europe and in December last year was formally backed by the Commission itself.

In Germany, the idea has been backed both by the Greens and by Martin Schulz, the outgoing SPD leader and likely foreign minister in the new coalition, who also sees it as a stepping stone towards the creation of a United States of Europe.

Germany has already accepted its payments into the EU will rise following Brexit - but, with the notion of hard-working Germans having to bail out feckless Greeks during the financial crisis entrenched in folk memory, these proposals are potentially explosive.Ian King

It was a key selling point for Mr Schulz, a former MEP, as he sought to persuade his party members, many of whom hate the idea of propping up Mrs Merkel, to enter another grand coalition.

But turning the €80bn ESM into a permanent European Monetary Fund will be contentious in Germany.

It was one reason why they refused to enter coalition with Mrs Merkel.

More importantly, many in Mrs Merkel's own party grouping loathe the proposal.

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Her former finance minister, the highly-respected Wolfgang Schäuble, was the first to propose converting the ESM into a permanent fund but only on the grounds that it was overseen by national parliaments, rather than pan-European institutions like the Commission or the European Parliament.

Image:Jean-Claude Juncker and Emmanuel Macron's France are known to support a permanent European Monetary Fund

The difference between that and what is now proposed appals many of Mrs Merkel's MPs who, according to a report in the Financial Times this week, have "bombarded" her with questions about it.

They - and their constituents - fear it will prove a backdoor way of getting ordinary Germans to hand more money to the rest of Europe.

That is likely to happen anyway - Germany has already accepted its payments into the EU will rise following Brexit - but, with the notion of hard-working Germans having to bail out feckless Greeks during the financial crisis entrenched in folk memory, these proposals are potentially explosive.

Opponents of the idea have been bolstered by Otmar Issing, the influential former chief economist of the European Central Bank and one of the founding fathers of the euro, who criticised the plan in an article for the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Image:Many Germans have a notion that they bailed out the Greeks during the financial crisis

Nor is the idea universally welcomed across the EU.

Austria, Finland and the Netherlands all mistrust any proposals that could ultimately lead to a common eurozone budget.

EU members not in the eurozone, like Sweden and Denmark, will also be suspicious of anything that relegates countries not using the single currency to second-class members of the EU - which, arguably, this proposal does.

It is easy to see how this could blow up into a row between Mrs Merkel and her MPs.

The German media is already speculating that Ireland, if its economy is hit by Brexit, would be the first to request money from a European Monetary Fund.

Many of Mrs Merkel's MPs are astonished she has apparently agreed to hand so much power - and German taxpayers money - to the European Commission and Parliament.

It all feels eerily reminiscent of the battles that David Cameron and, more especially, John Major fought with their own Eurosceptic backbenchers.